I think it boils down to this: The more you value your out-of-the-office life and the more enjoyment you gain from it, the less negative impact your job can have on your life. Of course that's dependent on having a job that permits you to have a life outside of work, being able to schedule regular out of work activities, and if not, finding the motivation to go do random stuff ad-hoc.

Now I visit a farm every week for ~30mins to see some animals, go ice skating regularly, gym regularly, and give my friends a break from parenting by taking their kids to the park to play.

When I stopped going to the gym regularly, when I started going to bars after work more, drinking more, and my life became more "sleep, work, drink, repeat", my mental state deteriorated, my ability to cope with bullshit at work reduced. Getting something resembling a routine of Good Things I Enjoy outside of work resulted in a near instant turnaround.

Thank you for posting this, I love reading other people having similar life experiences as myself, and I hope you feel the same from this too.

Perfect summary.

> Of course that's dependent on having a job that permits you to have a life outside of work

It probably explains the increased demand for flexible hours.

Although a lot of employers view that as a signal that the employee is a slacker, when I'm actually incredibly more productive if I can just take a break randomly in the middle of the day, do Outside Stuff and continue later.

> Thank you for posting this, I love reading other people having similar life experiences as myself, and I hope you feel the same from this too.

Definitely feeling the same.

One thing I have noticed is that some activities raise that bullshit threshold waaay more than others, and I can't really understand why, it's definitely not because one is more pleasant than the other.

Have you noticed anything similar?

Or desire to not have flexible hours, but go back to rigid 9-5 and to know you'll always be free after 5pm unless the business is burning down (rather than constantly on-call dealing with more bullshit every other day)

> One thing I have noticed is that some activities raise that bullshit threshold waaay more than others, and I can't really understand why, it's definitely not because one is more pleasant than the other.

Not sure if pleasant is the right word, but rather, internally rewarding.

Going to the gym is unpleasant, and whatever muscle group I've worked that day aches for days due to the intensity of the workout, but the end result (looking in the mirror) is hugely rewarding. Going to the farm isn't always very pleasant given the smell of animal droppings, but for some reason, by the time I leave the farm I'm feeling great. Ice skating is also gruelling, I fall a lot, I can't go more than 2-3 times a week as invariably I do something to damage my leg or ankle one of the days, but I still come out feeling great despite the pain.

Maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment, and have gone from being punished at work (high stress, high deliverables, high reward, followed by burnout) to similar outside of work.

Then again, I've discovered a love for musical theatre which is no pain but still huge gain (for me).

Walks in nature also do wonders for alleviating my mood. I've actually started taking outdoor walking breaks at work since the circumstances of this year lead to a lot less opportunity to walk out in nature than usual. This is also why I try not to work in a major city, because I need to see trees, grass, and hopefully flowing water on a regular basis.

> It probably explains the increased demand for flexible hours.

> Although a lot of employers view that as a signal that the employee is a slacker, when I'm actually incredibly more productive if I can just take a break randomly in the middle of the day, do Outside Stuff and continue later

That's awesome when you can find that. More often I find that "flexible hours" means "if you're an early bird, you're on your own until we decide to meander in, and expect to hear from us about work at 8pm or 9pm at any point during the week."

This 1000 times. There was nothing physically challenging about the work that burned me out. I wasn't starving to death, I could stop doing it at any time (in theory), and it would have been perfectly manageable for someone in a stronger mental state than me. It was the all consuming, this-work-is-my-life attitude that allowed it to become something so crippling.

Soccer is one of the few things I do that allows me to interact with people in a completely different professional field.

And working out gives me a sense of accomplishment completely divorced from my career, which I can carry with me all day in the way I feel physically.

All of these help provide context to my life (and reality), which I think helps me deal with stress at work. Another outlet my dad once suggested was reading fiction as a way to remind yourself there's more to the world than your world and to keep things in context.

Some ask how you have time for these activities with work. I ask how you can work without these activities.

Edit: Formatting and expansion.

That 100% focus is probably it then, you're basically relieved from stress for the duration because you don't have time to think about it like when you're "idle".

And the risk of crashing because of wandering thoughts is a pretty good motivator to be focused 100% :)

> And working out gives me a sense of accomplishment completely divorced from my career, which I can carry with me all day in the way I feel physically.

That feeling!

While actually doing it you might, or might not, actually enjoy it, but that whole feeling in your body after you're done... it truly feels like a really rewarding accomplishment.

> Another outlet my dad once suggested was reading fiction as a way to remind yourself there's more to the world than your world and to keep things in context.

It works, but I find that fades pretty quickly, you need to do it really often to persist it.

As a result, I came very close to dying or permanently injuring myself on a couple different occasions – and I am the sole provider for my family with a one and four year old.

If engaging in risky or dangerous activities makes you feel normal or alive, you should probably take that as a warning and maybe get checked out. Can't hurt, anyways.

Yes, it did start as a reckless "last thing I want to do before I die" depression kind of thing while I was a teenager.

Fortunately for me, all the physical effort/socializing/amazing scenery/nature changed my perspective 180° and now I'm a happy camper.

People that knew me before actually commented on how responsible/cautious I've now become with all my hobbies, some even call me grandpa :)

I probably won't be able to do all my hobbies forever, I feel that my reflexes are not what they were, but I'm compensating with experience.

Life is beautiful, I want to experience it as much as possible.

This is a problem. High sensation seeker, (dopamine seeker) with low perception of risk. Understanding risk is a skill. You can improve it through training and applying conscious decision making. Risk management is trying to mitigate the "unknown, unknowns." If you do not understand the risks, you cannot avoid the pitfalls until it stares you in the face.

Risk is also relative. Stand on the side of a busy road you are (mostly) safe. Walk out onto a busy road you are not. It's that stark.

Mark you are really out there :)

But once that lesson is learned -- there's not much need for adrenaline. Just rational aggression.

I don't (think) I'm doing it for the adrenaline, that would have faded sometime in the last 10 years.

Besides, as you said, you can get that cheaper/faster by riding a bicycle in rush hour traffic or standing near a ledge.

I think it's the 100% focus that does it, which sounds similar to what you describe with racing mode.

Even when I got a soaking it didn't really matter, you get so wet you can't get much wetter and then get home and have a warm shower.

It was also a great way of getting rid of tension. If you're angry you pedal harder and go faster which is more fun, so breaks any vicious cycle.

The first thing I recommend to anyone that shows early signs of depression is: take care of eating/sleeping/exercising.

Besides giving a concrete plan of action, if you take care of those, quality of life greatly improves, and you can "build" on that, getting out of the rut.

Nowadays family life provides enough of a contrast to work as does a few holidays in the mountains and some day trips hiking in the countryside.

It originates from the head but the impact is on the whole body impacting the HPA and other hormonal systems. And later whatever is controlled by them e.g. body fat. And once it impacts the body additional distress signals may be generated there. Healing obviously needs to take into account the head but that may not be enough.

Prevention and early counter measures are very critical!

But intense physical exertion _is_ stress, so this approach can backfire when your stress load is too high.

Probably because one is achievable and you know more or less how much you've got to go and the other is pretty abstract.

Maybe also the fact that one ends pretty soon (not to mention you can stop at any time) and the other goes on for way longer (and maybe you can't stop it).

Which is to say... if I wanted to be the #1 code all the time coder in the world, I would not want to be training for an Ironman or something that required 15 hours of fairly high physical stress a week.

Or if I wanted to train for an Ironman, I would not also work for a startup with my hair on fire all the time.

Clearly some people do both. Investment bankers love triathlon in fact. It seems to have negative physical effects after a while though... something has to give..

At least I get to fly after that :) ... unless the weather changes

I climb, have lots of friends who climb who do software. The two seem to go together well.

There's a quote in a jump plane that I really like: "you just have to get comfortable with fear"[1].

> What alternatives would you recommend?

Anything that requires you to be 100% focused on the task at hand, or physical exertion (or even both).

The catch is that you need to feel satisfaction from it, and humans suck at predicting what activity is going to give them satisfaction, that's why it's best to just go ahead and try different stuff, see what works.

You can usually tell within the first few minutes if it's for you or not.

[1] - http://i.imgur.com/zzszs.jpg

You're right though, some activities give me a big ol' "meh", and some make me feel joy right off the bat. Don't know for sure until you try it.

This year's new activity is going to be snowkiting, if we get any snow... (Snowless-November in the Canadian Prairies? What the heck?!)

Even after 10 years, the ride to altitude is the scary part for me -- and others that had the decency to admit it -- as soon as I'm out the door, everything calms down in the body, it's weird.

I'm guessing it's because while in the plane you have very little control over what happens, and the exit is especially dangerous because a lot of weight (skydivers) shift to one part of the plane.

> Snowless-November in the Canadian Prairies? What the heck?!

I feel your pain, we haven't had a decent winter in a few years now.

Like sports, you are never "there", you are always just getting better. You can take a break and play easier pieces just for fun, challenge yourself and practice difficult pieces, or focus on one specific area for improvement like rhythm/counting, switching from classical to jazz for a while, playing crazy orchestra reductions with way too many notes, improving your ear by trying to play along with pop music, etc.

The other nice thing about music is it's convenient to take a half-hour break from work, play/practice a while, then go back to work. It's funny: while I love playing music, I don't much like listening to it when others are playing it. I can spend 2 hours working on Chopin, but am bored after about 15 minutes listening to classical music, even if it's with someone at a concert. Just doesn't do it for me to listen. Played Fr Horn in a band and that was a lot of fun too, lead to friendships, etc.

If you're into it, music is a huge field that you'll never outgrow, even on a single instrument.